Happy Tuesday everyone! How is everyone? My week is just starting (and also never really ended last week).
I'm feeling a lot of feelings.
I had a lot of… what's a more positive word for conflicted experiences?
I'm feeling exhausted, invigorated, spent, and fed from a solo trip up to the queer promised land this weekend. I did a little time in the East Bay talking gender, race, and power with 11-13 year olds, and then re-processed those talks with peers over Burmese and Ethiopian food amongst a lot of young bearded and dreadlocked white folk. I engaged in triggering and inspiring conversation with other "professionals" around a community that I'm simultaneously near, in, and serve. I caught some donation based (but very physically focused) yoga. I had a quiet girlfriend night where we laughed, and cried, and hugged over roasted broccoli, whiskey, online dating, and the way not being walked to our cars after a date can make the most liberated of us feel like shit.
P.S. Just in case you need it, ladies. Here's a (warning: very obscene but perfect) love note from Elle King.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSEz5ViwiVQ[/embed]
I pulled tarot when I got into town and should have been unsurprised to see the Four of Bones staring back at me.
"There is a lot going on in this card. Here is the cyclical structure of the seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Here are the changes each of those seasons bring, and their constant return to the beginning of the cycle wherever we may perceive to be…. at the center.. the human heart. There it lies shielded from the elements, truth at the crossroads; the calm inside the storm.
The Four of Bones is about structure, cycles, boundaries and borders. With this card we have the power to protect ourselves and others. It represents the power of four walls. With these walls we can build a shelter or a fortress, a cozy bedroom or a prison cell. The challenge of this card is to know the power of limits and boundaries, and know how to use that power in positive ways."
The Collective Tarot
The mystical, strong and fluid, shifting walls of The Four of Bones stayed with me throughout the weekend, my drive home, and I suspect are still hovering nearby this morning.
I've been reflecting on what this trip marked for me- the cycle and the season of the year past. I thought about the space the solo nature of it serendipitously brought (as much as I intended and desired it to be a little escapist love getaway). I've been attempting to discern what feels like protective boundary setting and what feels like oppressive rigidity. I deconstructed the work that I saw being done in and around community and tried to find gratitude and "balance between the power of freedom and the power of structure."
And, Lord Alanis knows, I'm trying my damn-dest to step up to the challenge of knowing "the power of limits and boundaries, and.. how to use that power in positive ways."
I stared back into the center of The Four of Bones and wondered if the heart was really "shielded from the elements?" And, if it didn't feel that way, if this was a sign I needed to build better boundaries or "knock down some walls; loosen the hinges on {my} heart. Allow {myself} to move into the next phase in the cycle of {my} life?"
The Four of Bones (or more classically The Four of Pentacles) exemplifies the contradictory and process instigating way that tarot offers us reflection and guidance. It doesn't give us the answer but rather challenges us to look towards places of growth through introspection. It warns us that anything to it's extreme-- to rigidity can be unhelpful-- and also carries the truth of constant change. Any season will eventually cycle through to the next and (eventually) back to itself.
I'm meditating on how to keep myself in a cozy bedroom.
A shelter that protects me, comforts me, and offers me rest. I want to intentionally create sacred space and feel safe asking others into it as well as feel content and fed sitting in it alone. I want to be able to kindly and lovingly ask for my solitude as well as lean into the risk of requesting company.
It's not quite finished but I've heard home improvements last for as long as you are fortunate enough to have a home.
Currently laying blue prints for my four walls,
Traci
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Traci {She|Her|Hers|They|Them|Theirs} is a yoga teacher, therapist and amateur tarot enthusiast! They try to believe in the power of their inner Magician, stay inspired by the Fool’s spirit, understand struggle through the lens of The Tower/Disaster and always stay reminded that, “The Star Awaits…”
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